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Wednesday, 11 September 2013

The Secret of Wobble, by Laurie Graham

My theme is food that wobbles. It’s one of those things you
either love or hate. My interest in jellies

grew out of the creation of Jack
Buzzard, Master Confectioner of Oxford Street, and husband of Nellie Buzzard,
Humble Companion to Princess Sophie of Hanover.

Moulded desserts with a wobble factor would have been a big
item for artisans like Jack during the Georgian era. People loved to see a
table decked with some kind of elaborate edible monument, food made to look
like a building or a tableau. But the idea of a jelly-like dessert was nothing
new.

In the Beginning was flummery. Flummery was originally a
simple waste-not-want-not dish made from the husks and dust in a bag of
oatmeal. They were soaked in water to release their starch and the resulting
liquid was boiled with sugar. In Scotland it was called sowans, in England it
was called wash-brew. The Welsh claim a hand in naming it flummery.It was cheap and bland and recommended as a
food for invalids. Leach was a similar dish but made from almond milk-its
name is probably derived from the Spanish leche.
Leach was also known as blancmange, or even jaunemange if it was coloured with saffron, and sometimes called shape, a very
popular item on Victorian and Edwardian tables. By the mid 20th century blancmange had
deteriorated into a milk-based wobbler, artificially coloured and thickened
with corn starch. It was one of the nursery food horrors of my childhood.

Clear jellies were something else. I’ve always found them
magical to look at. How on earth were they made?By Jack Buzzard’s time, the late 18th
century, isinglass would have been the jellifying ingredient of choice.
Hartshorn (literally the grated, dried horn of young red deer) had by then gone
out of fashion for its gelatine though it was still used by bakers as a
leavening agent and by swooning ladies for its ammonia kick in smelling salts.
Isinglass is a strange substance, a type of collagen found in the swim bladders
of fish. Sturgeon was the usual source when sturgeon were still abundant in
British waters, but as they became over-fished isinglass producers turned to
the cod and hake that were more plentiful.

Jellies became a popular, affordable bonne bouche. While the toffs headed to Berkeley Square for Italian
ices, the lower classes flocked to jelly houses and Covent Garden was
jelly-house central.The area that was
formerly an exclusive residential address had been abandoned in the relentless
westward drift of those with money. Covent Garden was turning commercial. On the
corner of Russell Street a shop opened selling saucy engravings. Coffee shops proliferated
(plus ça change), the streets were crowded with theatre-goers, and a jelly house
became the ideal place for a girl to pick up a bit of trade. Jelly house girls
were a cut above the women who offered a twopenny upright. For a price they’d
take you to a room for half an hour. In late 18th century London to
be seen seated alone, toying with a jelly, was the equivalent of hanging a red
lamp in your window.

Isn’t it amazing how deer horns, sturgeon’s swim bladders and
prostitution can all come together in 500 words? That’s history for you.

Late news. I’m permitting Nellie Buzzard and her coachman, Dick
Morphew out from between the covers of A
Humble Companion to appear at the Chiswick Book Festival this coming Sunday,
September 15th.They will be
accompanied by Mr Adrian Teal, a caricaturist in the finest 18th
century tradition and creator of The Gin Lane Gazette.

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